Categories

Meta

Category: building picstory

It’s about time that I posted an update on progress with the picstory website.

While it was a lot of work, there was a lot of satisfaction in archiving Willem Kooij’s sites to picstory.net. The website re-coding should result in Willem’s writing and photos being preserved well into the future.

Because it took some months to archive Willem’s work, I’ve gotten a bit behind with the main picstory archive. The main additions this year have been family photos and funeral notices. All in all, the archive now contains over 650 items, with many thousands waiting to be added…

I just acquired a new Epson V550 scanner, with attachments for slides and negatives and look forward to capturing some of the old negatives from the vault!

The picstory.net website was meant as a repository of family documents, photos, documents, etc… But I decided to slightly expand its purpose.

My cousin, Willem Kooij started blogging in 2005. He wrote daily stories right through a turbulent time, including the death of his wife Yvonne and up to his own passing in 2013.

After his death, a couple of friends looked after his affairs, including his websites. Recently, I approached them about some glitches with the site and ended up offering to archive Willem’s ( and Yvonne’s) sites on a permanent basis.

As might be expected, there is more involved than just copying files and it’s a slow process, but you can see the work in progress here.

So, there we are… another year gone! While I would have liked getting more of the family site built, it now has just over 400 items, at least enough to see where it’s heading…

I really enjoyed scanning in some terrific Christmas / New Year cards from Han Hoogenkamp recently, he was one of Dad’s colleagues back in Holland at the Navy (see earlier item). They’re all hand-made (more on Han’s page) and a wonderful memory of the man, who I remember very well. He taught Dad to play the organ, was a valuable colleague at the Hydrographic Office and kept in touch for many years after we left for Australia.